Archives
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Recent Posts
- LA4: Merely having a concealed firearm isn’t RS for a frisk
- OR: Merely driving off the road wasn’t RS, but adding the driver’s demeanor at the time was
- OH6: Trial court’s failure to explain RS under Rodriguez required remand
- CA6: Asking def before a patdown during arrest what he had on him wasn’t barred by Miranda
- NY Queens: PC shown for SW blood drawn at hospital after car wreck
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
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Fourth Amendment cases,
citations, and links -
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
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Section 1983 Blog -
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me -
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."
–Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others) -
“I am still learning.”
—Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)). -
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud -
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848) -
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984). -
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961). -
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987). -
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today."
— Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting). -
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property."
—Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765) -
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment."
—United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) -
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). -
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987) -
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967) -
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) -
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989) -
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards -
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew "The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime."
—Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
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Daily Archives: December 26, 2019
Fortune: Why Apple and Google Have ‘No Real Way’ to Stop Surveillance Apps Like ToTok
Fortune: Why Apple and Google Have ‘No Real Way’ to Stop Surveillance Apps Like ToTok by Alyssa Newcomb (“Perhaps the most troubling part of it all is that there would have been no way for either company to detect any … Continue reading
EFF: Ring Throws Customers Under the Bus After Data Breach
EFF: Ring Throws Customers Under the Bus After Data Breach by Cooper Quintin and Bill Budington:
CA1: Govt showed nexus to house that drug dealers keep money, books, customer lists, and product there
The district court properly denied defendant’s motion to suppress because there was probable cause to issue the search warrant. It was likely that a drug dealer kept his money, books, and customer lists in a safe place like his residence, … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: Bodycam video showed pretext, but there still was a factual and legal basis for stop
Officers on bodycam are talking about pretext, but there was, in fact, a factual and legal basis for the stop that makes pretext irrelevant. United States v. Jones, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 219072 (W.D. Ky. Dec. 20, 2019):
NYTimes: Giving the Gift of Surveillance
NYTimes: Giving the Gift of Surveillance by Alex Kingsbury (“As 2019 comes to a close, millions of new spying devices are headed for American homes.”)
ID: Visitors during a parole search were subject to reasonable questioning
Visitors on the premises during a parole search are subject to at least some questions under Summers without it being an unreasonable detention. State v. Phipps, 2019 Ida. LEXIS 239 (Dec. 20, 2019):
DE: Slim inference for nexus wasn’t enough, and exclusionary rule applies
The affidavit for the search warrant creates only a slim inference at best, and no facts at all, showing a nexus to the place to be searched and the fraud crime under investigation. Therefore, the search warrant lacks probable cause … Continue reading
LA1: Parolee’s positive drug screen justified home search
Defendant’s positive drug screens were reason for an unannounced home and cell phone text message parole search. State v. St. Cyre, 2019 La. App. LEXIS 2305 (La. App. 1 Cir. Dec. 19, 2019). An officer found two people asleep in … Continue reading
S.D.Ga.: The fact it was ambiguous whether def’s images were CP or not doesn’t nullify PC for the search
It was ambiguous whether the images that officers believed were on defendant’s computer qualified as child pornography, but the question for probable cause is reason to believe and not sufficient evidence to convict. Even so, the good faith exception applies. … Continue reading
CA6: Def doesn’t show officer delayed stop for drug dog; whole encounter was 5-10 minutes
Defendant argued that the officer delayed the process of issuing a traffic citation by extraneous questioning just to get a dog sniff in within the period before the traffic citation could be completed. Still, the entire process reasonably took ten … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Typo in SW for emails could be overlooked in “common sense,” nontechnical reading
There was a typo in the affidavit for search warrant for emails, and the government procured another. The typo wasn’t even material because a “common sense” reading of the whole affidavit shows it was typographical error that could be overcome. … Continue reading
DE: Just because criminals communicate by cell phone isn’t enough to show nexus
Defendant’s cell phone search was not based on a logical nexus between defendant’s cell phone and the murder. Just because criminals communicate by cell phone isn’t enough here. State v. Johnson, 2019 Del. Super. LEXIS 661 (Dec. 18, 2019):